AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Right.” Merle pressed her mouth into a tight line. “It just seems so unfair to give the former Draconians amnesty and move on when we lost good witches to their fanaticism.”
Hazel’s heart stung at the thought of Hanna Roth, one of the witches she’d been friends with for years, who’d died in the final battle between the Draconians and the Aequitas. Hanna was one of a handful of witches who had lost their lives during the conflict stirred up by Juneau Laroche and her followers. One of several lights forever extinguished.
“And the Draconians had to bury a few of their own, too,” she reminded Merle, swallowing her grief. “All of us suffered losses, and the fact that the Draconians started the war notwithstanding, if we keep throwing our dead in each other’s faces and insist on ever more retribution, we’ll end up hurling spells at each other again before we—”
The door to the adjacent living room opened, again, and in sauntered Tallak. Hazel’s pulse sped up—much to her consternation—her eyes glued to the way his scuffed jeans hugged his hips and butt. Said butt had played a prominent role in her fantasies over the past months, what with the way her hands still remembered what it was like to grab on and feel the muscles flexing.
Heat flushed her face as memories of one stolen, inappropriate, and entirely secret moment in Faerie flooded her mind. No one knew. Not Merle, not Lily, not even those with whom Hazel and Tallak had traveled back from Faerie after they’d found Basil and Rose. If there was one thing Tallak and Hazel readily agreed on, it was the vow that “what happened in Faerie stays in Faerie.”
Tell that to my unruly libido… Just being in the same room with him made her body hypersensitive, let her heartbeat throb in delicate parts, yearning for another taste of him.
Ridiculous. Behaving like an addict who desperately fought the urge for a fix. How unbecoming. She was an adult witch in control of powerful magic, not a teenage girl overwhelmed by hormones. Lusting after the biological father of her adopted son heralded nothing but trouble, especially considering who—and what—that father was.
She was not going to fall prey to the animal magnetism of a demon who’d slaughtered an entire room full of fae in an unhinged rage.
In that moment, Tallak glanced over, and their eyes met in a searing flash. His expression darkened, his upper lip curled, and he couldn’t have looked more disgusted if he’d caught sight of a puddle of puke. The unbidden desire sizzling in her veins fizzled out, washed away by a wave of bitter irritation.
Just as well. A good reminder of why her attraction to him could never, ever be acted upon, why she had to get her wayward hormones under control again. He was the most cantankerous, disdainful male she’d met since she’d cut herself on the shards of her shattered marriage, and—by the gods—she’d sworn never to let any man close to her again who looked at her with anything less than the respect she deserved.
Her walls up and hardened once more, her unhealthy craving for an off-limits demon stuffed inside a fortified box deep inside her, she lifted her chin as Tallak opened a cupboard and took out a bag of tortilla chips.
“Are you comfortable raiding my kitchen?” she asked. “Would you like a helping of salsa to go along with your lack of manners?”
Tallak stopped—and her heart did an annoying pause-and-flip in sync with that motion—scrunched up his forehead as if pondering, and said, “We still have the cheese dip, so, nope. But what I’ve been wondering…if you had adopted another boy, would you have called him Oregano, or Thyme?”
Hazel narrowed her eyes at him, and the air crackled with the charge of her magic. “Sage,” she replied coolly.
He bared his teeth and stalked out of the kitchen, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “Who the fuck names their kids after herbs?”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Merle cleared her throat. Hazel mentally shook herself and focused on her fellow witch again.
“Are you two going to get this cleared up soon?” Merle asked.
“There’s nothing there to be cleared.” Hazel shrugged. “He hates the fact that I named his son Basil, and I don’t care.”
Merle rolled her eyes. “I mean this tension between you. I could cut it with a knife, it’s so thick. So, are you two going to have angry sex and get this out of the way so all of us can breathe freely again while in your presence, or are you going to keep pretending there’s nothing between you?”
“I have many responsibilities,” she replied, picking at a stray thread on her cardigan, “but maintaining good air quality around here is not one of them.”
“Gods.” Merle rubbed her forehead with one hand.
“One thing to look forward to,” Hazel said, opting for a change of subject, “with the reintegration of the former Draconians is that we won’t be struggling to have the numbers for patrolling the area anymore.”
With half of the witch community effectively barred from active duty during the house arrest, the workload for the Aequitas witches had doubled as they had to pick up the slack. Much of the Portland metro territory was still under witch jurisdiction—as opposed to being the Demon Lord’s territory outright—and making sure the demons in the area didn’t overrun the human population required constant vigilance and regular patrols.
A considering look from Merle.
“You haven’t been quite as affected,” Hazel added, “because Rhun wouldn’t let you work overtime now that you’re pregnant, but for some of us, it’s been tough.”
Hazel herself had taken on a shift almost every night, and it hadn’t been all quiet walks in the fresh autumn air. With the witch community low on numbers, more demons than usual had pressed their advantage and aggressively tried to increase their hunting grounds.
“I’m sorry,” Merle said. “I wish I could have helped m—”
Hazel cut her off with a wave of her hand and a small smile. “It’s not on you, and having one more witch to patrol wouldn’t have made much of a difference. We need dozens more. That’s why lifting the house arrest is neces—”
Laughter spilled over from the living room. The sound—two male voices, one of which licked over her skin like a physical caress, raised the hairs on her arms, and made her shiver oh-so good, much to her chagrin—was accompanied by faint noises from whatever game Tallak and Basil were playing. Basil whooped and hollered, then laughed again, and her heart squeezed at the knowledge that he was happy.
This young man she’d raised from when he’d been laid in her arms as a newborn, whom she’d loved like her own from the very beginning—who now, for the first time, had a real father who loved him unconditionally, who was actually there for him. Not like Robert, her late husband, whose unconfirmed—even if true—suspicion that Basil wasn’t his had led him to treat the boy like an unwanted burden.
